Email marketing in 2025 shows clear performance benchmarks and trends. Here’s what you need to know:
- Average Open Rate: 42.35% (varies by industry, 22.57%–59.70%).
- Average Click-Through Rate (CTR): 2.00%.
- Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR): 5.63%.
- Top Performing Industries: Religious organizations lead in open rates (59.70%), while hobbies top CTR (4.36%).
- Mobile Usage: 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices.
Key Strategies to Improve Results:
- Personalize content to boost CTR (up to 39% increase).
- Use automated email flows for up to 30x more revenue.
- Optimize for mobile – 50% of non-optimized emails are deleted within seconds.
- Segment your audience for targeted messaging (can double CTR).
Privacy Impact: Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) makes CTR and CTOR more reliable than open rates. Data privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA demand careful handling of subscriber data.
Emerging Trends: AI is transforming email campaigns with automation and personalization, while behavior-based emails significantly increase engagement and conversions.
Email remains a crucial marketing tool. Focus on personalization, mobile optimization, and compliance with privacy laws to stay ahead.
Email Marketing KPI Benchmarks
Core Email Marketing Metrics
Understanding key email marketing metrics is essential for evaluating how well your campaigns are performing. These metrics expand on earlier benchmarks, offering the insights you need to fine-tune your approach.
Open Rates Explained
Open rates show the percentage of recipients who open your email. They offer a glimpse into how effective your subject lines are and how much trust your audience has in you as a sender. On average, open rates across industries hover around 42.35%, with a range from 22.57% to 59.70% depending on the sector . However, changes in data privacy have made open rates less reliable in recent years .
Here’s a quick comparison of key email metrics across industries:
| Metric Type | Average Rate | Range Across Industries |
|---|---|---|
| Open Rate | 42.35% | 22.57% – 59.70% |
| Click Rate | 2.00% | 0.77% – 4.36% |
| Click-to-Open Rate | 5.63% | 2.93% – 10.71% |
While open rates measure initial interest, click-through rates (CTRs) provide a deeper look at actual engagement.
Click-Through Rates (CTRs)
Open rates might tell you how far your email reaches, but CTRs reveal how effective your content is at driving action. CTR measures the percentage of recipients who click on links within your email, making it one of the most dependable engagement metrics in 2025. The average CTR is 2.00%, with high-performing campaigns often landing between 2% and 5% .
To improve your CTR:
- Place links where they’re easy to spot
- Use clear and compelling calls-to-action
- Personalize your content to match individual preferences
Secondary Performance Metrics
Beyond opens and clicks, other metrics can shed light on your campaign’s overall health. For instance, average bounce rates are 2.48%, while unsubscribe rates sit at 0.89% across industries . A high click-to-open rate (CTOR) – averaging 5.63% – signals that your content resonates with readers .
To keep these secondary metrics in check:
- Regularly clean your email lists
- Use double opt-in for new subscribers
- Segment your audience for more targeted messaging
Together, these metrics offer a clear picture of how your email campaigns are performing, helping you make smarter, data-driven decisions.
2025 Industry Benchmarks
This section provides a detailed look at open rates and click-through rates (CTR) across various industries, helping to highlight sector-specific performance.
Open Rates by Sector
The religious sector stands out with an impressive 59.70% open rate, while travel and transportation trail behind at 22.57%. Other sectors showing strong engagement include art galleries (52.07%), non-profits (53.21%), and hobbies (53.33%) .
In the B2B space, here’s how different industries perform:
- Software and web apps: 38.14%
- Marketing and advertising: 39.05%
- Business and finance: 43.26%
- Consulting: 45.74%
These variations in open rates reflect differing levels of initial interest across industries. However, CTR offers a clearer picture of actual engagement.
CTR Performance by Industry
Click-through leaders don’t always align with open rate leaders. Hobby-related emails lead CTR at 4.36%, followed by government communications (4.31%) and media content (4.02%). Other high-performing sectors include non-profits (3.25%), art galleries (3.15%), bloggers (3.23%), and artists (3.24%) .
Industry Metrics Comparison
A closer look at industry metrics highlights the differences in performance across sectors:
| Industry Type | Open Rate | Click Rate | Click-to-Open Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | 31.08% | 1.19% | 4.55% |
| Healthcare | 44.60% | 1.75% | 4.64% |
| Education | 45.32% | 2.26% | 5.96% |
| Business and finance | 43.26% | 1.63% | 4.36% |
| Technology | 38.14% | 2.04% | 6.18% |
For example, education emails have a higher open rate (45.32%) compared to technology (38.14%) . Healthcare, while maintaining solid open rates, struggles with lower CTR, suggesting room for improvement in content strategy .
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Performance Impact Factors
Mobile vs Desktop Usage
By 2025, 55% of email opens will happen on mobile devices . This shift highlights the importance of mobile-friendly campaigns, especially since half of recipients delete emails that aren’t properly formatted for mobile within seconds .
Here’s how mobile optimization affects email performance:
| Device Impact Factor | Performance Metric | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile-optimized emails | Click engagement | 33% of all email clicks |
| Non-optimized campaigns | Deletion rate | 50% within 3 seconds |
| Mobile opens | Total email opens | 55% of all opens |
| Campaign optimization | Mobile-ready campaigns | 80% of total campaigns |
These stats underline how crucial mobile optimization is for improving open and click rates.
Data Privacy Rules
Shifting privacy regulations are also changing how email performance is measured. For example, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) has made open rate tracking less reliable, while GDPR and CCPA have imposed stricter rules on data collection .
"Email has everything to do with data privacy and is most often where businesses run afoul of digital privacy laws." – Harry Maugans, CEO of Privacy Bee
The stakes are high: GDPR violations can lead to fines of up to $10.5 million or 2% of revenue, and CCPA breaches may cost $7,500 per intentional violation .
Performance Improvement Tips
Despite these challenges, certain strategies consistently improve email campaign results. For instance, automated email flows achieve open rates of 51.36%, and segmentation can boost click-through rates (CTR) by 100.95% .
A great example is Lands’ End, which used first-party data like purchase history, browsing behavior, and email activity to achieve a 158% higher conversion rate .
Here are some key strategies to boost email performance:
- Data-Driven Personalization: Use real-time insights and behavior-based triggers to send highly relevant content.
- Authentication Protocols: Strengthen email security and deliverability with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC.
- List Hygiene: Regularly clean up your email lists and adopt double opt-in processes to keep engagement high.
"Email is a safe alternative to cookies and other forms of tracking where the user hasn’t given permission for the site/marketer to collect their data… Email is fully opt-in. By signing up, subscribers have inherently given you their permission to market to them and use their data to create a more personalized experience." – Jeff Kupietzky, CEO of Jeeng
2025 Email Marketing Changes
AI in Email Campaigns
AI is reshaping how marketers run email campaigns. A whopping 57% of marketers now use AI to automate tasks like audience segmentation, optimizing send times, and tailoring content to individual users . One marketer even reported a tenfold boost in A/B testing results by using AI for personalized content . That said, while automation is powerful, it’s important to maintain human oversight to ensure campaigns stay on track .
Custom Content Delivery
Personalized content based on a customer’s journey is making waves. For example, in retail and e-commerce, behavior-driven emails result in 22.6 times higher click-to-open rates and 60.7 times higher conversion rates compared to generic emails. Media and entertainment campaigns also see massive gains, with a 15.5 times increase in click-to-open rates (CTOR) and an incredible 2,043.4 times boost in conversions when emails are tailored to the customer’s journey stage . Plus, with 43.6% of customers using three to four channels before making a purchase, it’s clear that a multi-channel approach is no longer optional – it’s a must . These strategies are helping marketers keep pace with evolving customer habits.
User Behavior Shifts
Changes in how users interact with emails are pushing marketers to rethink their strategies. Right now, 85% of emails are opened on mobile devices . Mobile-friendly designs can increase clicks by 24% . Features like short subject lines, fast-loading content, and tap-friendly calls-to-action are becoming essential. The shift to mobile-first design has made traditional desktop-focused layouts much less effective . To stay ahead, marketers are focusing on real-time personalization paired with mobile optimization – all while keeping data privacy top of mind.
Summary
Email marketing in 2025 reveals clear differences across industries and regions. Key benchmarks show an average open rate of 42.35%, a click rate of 2.00%, and a click-to-open rate of 5.63% .
Some industries stand out in performance. Religious organizations have the highest open rates at 59.70%, while travel struggles with just 22.57%. The hobbies sector leads in click rates (4.36%), and media takes the top spot for click-to-open rates at 10.71% . Regionally, Australia outperforms others with 46.34% open rates and 2.35% click rates, while LATAM trails at 30.67% and 1.09%, respectively .
Advances in technology continue to reshape email campaigns. AI and behavior-based personalization are making campaigns more effective, with a focus on targeted messaging and mobile-friendly designs becoming crucial for success.
To improve your email marketing outcomes, focus on these strategies:
- Build targeted subscriber segments.
- Use AI for personalized content.
- Design emails with mobile users in mind.
- Prioritize data privacy.
- Automate communication flows for consistent engagement.
With the global email marketing market expected to grow to $17.9 billion by 2027 , this channel remains a cornerstone of digital strategies. As privacy regulations evolve and user behaviors change, refining your approach to deliverability and engagement is essential.
